Adobe squeezes Photoshop down to phone size

It's taken the company a lot longer than I'd expected, but Adobe has finally rolled out a version of its tablet-based Photoshop Touch for even smaller screens, Photoshop Touch for phone.

The most surprising aspect is that it's a feature-identical version of the tablet software; I'm not sure we need such a complete editor on anything even as big as a Galaxy S3. But if you have a yen to composite up to 16 layers (or 3 layers at the maximum file size of 12 megapixels), you'll be able to do so on any Android (4.0 or later) or iOS (iPhone 4S/iPod Touch 5th generation or later) device. As of now, the company has no plans to support Windows Phone.

The biggest differences between the tablet and phone versions are in the user interface -- the tutorials are less interactive, more of a getting-started guide, and the app screens have been arranged slightly differently to accommodate the narrower devices.

Even if you've bought the $9.99 tablet version or are shelling out for a Creative Cloud subscription, you'll pay another $4.99 for the phone version. I'm not sure why there's such a large price disparity, since it's undoubtedly very similar code. (So either one is very overpriced or the other is very underpriced.) You have to sign up for the free 2GB Creative Cloud plan.

While my hands-on testing with the software will have to wait until I can download it later today (or tomorrow, depending upon your time zone), I did notice that it still seems to have the same horrible font selection as its big brother.

It should be available in the relevant app stores by the time you read this, in English, French, German, and Japanese.